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The State of Emergency in France: Days Without End?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2018

Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez
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Abstract

State of emergency in France – Historical origins of the legal regime – Ways in which it was adapted and normalised between 2015 and 2017 – Application against rule of law principles and human rights standards – Institutional balance between powers – In-depth study of 700 court decisions – Legal challenges to state of emergency measures – Challenges to judicial scrutiny

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Articles
Information
European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 700 - 720
Copyright
© 2018 The Authors 

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Footnotes

*

Professor of Law, Deputy director, Centre de théorie et analyse du droit (UMR 7074), Equipe CREDOF, University Paris Nanterre.

References

1 See Interview with Fionnuala Ni Aolain (by S. Hennette Vauchez), 14 Revue des droits de l’Homme (2018), available at <journals.openedition.org/revdh/>, visited 22 October 2018.

2 Gross, O. and Ni Aolain, F., Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 Report to the UN Secretary General, 27 September 2017, A/72/43280, <www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Terrorism/A_72_43280_EN.pdf>, visited 22 October 2018.

4 Preliminary findings of the visit: UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism concludes visit to France, <www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23128&LangID=E>, visited 22 October 2018.

5 For literature on this last application of the state of emergency see Beaud, O. and Guérin-Bargues, C., L’état d’urgence. Etude constitutionnelle, historique et critique (LGDJ 2016)Google Scholar ; Halpérin, J.-L., Hennette Vauchez, S. and Millard, E. (eds.), L’état d’urgence. De l’exception à la banalisation (Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre 2017)Google Scholar ; Cassia, P., Contre l’état d’urgence (Dalloz 2016)Google Scholar ; Hennette Vauchez, S. (ed.), Ce qui reste(ra) toujours de l’urgence (LGDJ/Varenne forthcoming)Google Scholar .

6 Law 2017-1510 of 30 October 2017. For a reading that rather insists on the differences between the 2017 SILT Act and the 1955 regime see Le Bot, O., ‘L’état d’urgence permanent’, Revue Française de Droit Administratif (2017) p. 1115 Google Scholar .

7 Ackerman, B., ‘The Emergency Constitution’, 113(8) Yale Law Journal (2004) p. 1030 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Gross, O., ‘What ‘Emergency’ Regime?’, 13(1) Constellations (2006) p. 74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 Thénault, S., ‘L’état d’urgence (1955-2005). De l’Algérie coloniale à la France contemporaine: destin d’une loi’, 1(218) Le Mouvement Social (2007) p. 122 Google Scholar .

9 C. Schmitt, La Dictature (Seuil 2015).

10 G. Agamben, L’état d’execption. Homo Sacer II (Seuil 2013).

11 Harcourt, B., The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens (Basic Books 2018)Google Scholar .

12 Harcourt, supra n. 11, p. 213: ‘Many commentators argue that we now live, in the United States and in the West more broadly, in a “state of exception” characterized by suspended legality (…). This view, however, misperceives one particular tactic of counterinsurgency – namely, the state of emergency – for the broader rationality of our new political regime. It fails to capture the larger ambition of our new mode of governing. The fact is, our government does everything possible to legalize its counterinsurgency measures and to place them solidly within the rule of law (...). the idea is not to put law on hold, not even temporarily. It is not to create an exception, literally or figuratively. On the contrary, the central animating idea is to turn the counterinsurgency model into a fully legal strategy. So the governing paradigm is not one of exceptionality, but of counterinsurgency and legality’.

13 Ibid., p. 214 ff.

14 On which, see Thénault, supra n. 8.

15 10 years after the events took place, there finally was a verdict in the trial of the policemen that were chasing the adolescents that night. The policemen were charged with non-assistance to people in danger. They were found not guilty. See Le Monde, <www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/05/18/mort-de-zyed-et-bouna-relaxe-definitive-des-deux-policiers_4635109_3224.html>, visited 22 October 2018.

16 Rousseau, D., ‘L’état d’urgence, un état vide de droit(s)’, 2 Projet (2006) p. 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

17 Law n° 2015-1501 of 20 November 2015.

18 Figures established by compiling the data published by the parliamentary monitoring commission: <www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/commissions-permanentes/commission-des-lois/controle-parlementaire-de-l-etat-d-urgence/controle-parlementaire-de-l-etat-d-urgence>.

19 It is impossible to directly analyse the 10,000 or so administrative measures that effectively constituted the state of emergency; they were individual and confidential measures that, as such, remain inaccessible. In order nonetheless to provide an in-depth analysis of this significant legal episode, a group of researchers at the CREDOF of University Paris Nanterre secured access to the totality of court decisions that resulted from litigation triggered by those measures. With the support of both the Council of State (which granted access to the administrative court internal database) and the Défenseur des droits (who supported the research), we gathered and analysed a corpus of 775 administrative court decisions handed down between November 2015 and January 2017. For another batch of articles on the French experience under the state of emergency of 2015-17, see the collection gathered by Joël Andriantsimbazovina, Benjamin Francos, Julia Schmitz, Mathieu Touzeil Divina in Journal du droit administrative (2016), <www.journal-du-droit-administratif.fr/?page_id=2>, visited 22 October 2018.

20 Notes blanches are anonymous, unsigned and undated memos provided by intelligence services concerning individuals under surveillance. During the state of emergency, a large share of the measures based on the 1955 Act originated in such notes blanches. Such notes are explicitly mentioned in 49.6% of the court decisions we analysed.

21 See for instance Amnesty International, ‘Des vies bouleversées. L’impact disproportionné de l’état d’urgence en France’, January 2016, <www.amnesty.org/fr/documents/eur21/3364/2016/fr/>, visited 22 October 2018.

22 Amnesty International, ‘Un droit, pas une menace’, 31 May 2017, <www.amnesty.org/fr/documents/eur21/6104/2017/fr/>, visited 22 October 2018.

23 In the Lyon judicial district, the share is 59%; it is 57.4% in the Bordeaux district and 65% in the district of Nancy.

24 98%, i.e. 50 rulings out of a total of 51 in the Melun judicial district. This has to do with the presence of an important mosque that has been identified as a hub of radical Islam.

25 As low as 22% in the judicial district of Nantes.

26 71% of the judicial rulings in the district of Rennes initiated in suits brought by political activists who had been subjected to house arrests or geographical bans. For more on this statistical analysis see S. Hennette Vauchez et al., ‘L’état d’urgence au prisme contentieux : analyse transversale de corpus’, in Hennette Vauchez, supra n. 5.

27 For France, see Alix, J., Terrorisme et droit pénal. Etude critique des infractions terroristes (Dalloz 2010)Google Scholar and Alix, J., ‘La place du droit pénal dans la lutte contre le terrorisme’, in Mélanges en l’honneur de G. Giudicelli-Delage (Dalloz 2016) p. 423 Google Scholar . See also Lazerges, C. and Henrion-Stoffel, H., ‘Le déclin du droit pénal: l'émergence d’une politique criminelle de l’ennemi’, Revue des sciences criminelles (2016) p. 649 Google Scholar ; Le Monnier de Gouville, P., ‘De la répression à la prévention. Réflexion sur la politique criminelle antiterroriste’, 2 Les Cahiers de la Justice (2017) p. 209 Google Scholar ; and A. Ponseille, ‘Les infractions de prévention, argonautes de la lutte contre le terrorisme’, Revue des droits et libertés fondamentaux (2017) <www.revuedlf.com/droit-penal/les-infractions-de-prevention-argonautes-de-la-lutte-contre-le-terrorisme/>, visited 22 October 2018.

28 See for instance Art. 8 of the Declaration (‘The Law must prescribe only the punishments that are strictly and evidently necessary; and no one may be punished except by virtue of a Law drawn up and promulgated before the offence is committed, and legally applied’), that has led to standards of precision and strict interpretation of legislatively defined criminal offences. For a recent instance of a ruling by the Conseil constitutionnel striking down a piece of counterterrorist legislation on the grounds that it was not necessary in that respect: CC, 2017-625QPC of 7 April 2017, <www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/francais/les-decisions/acces-par-date/decisions-depuis-1959/2017/2017-625-qpc/version-en-anglais.149217.html>, visited 22 October 2018: ‘7. However, by including the material facts that constitute a preparatory act of “searching for … objects or substances that create a danger to others”, without defining the acts that constitute such a search within the framework of an individual terrorist undertaking, the legislature allowed punishment for actions that have not materialised in, by themselves, the desire to prepare for an infraction. 18. It follows from the foregoing that the words “searching for”, as appearing in Section 1 of Paragraph I of Article 421-2-6 are manifestly contrary to the principle of the necessity of offences and penalties. They should be declared unconstitutional’.

29 See generally Lazerges, C. and Giudicelli-Delage, G. (eds.), La dangerosité saisie par le droit penal (PUF 2011)Google Scholar .

30 Touillier, M. (ed.), Le Code de la sécurité intérieure, artisan d’un nouvel ordre ou semeur de désordre? (Dalloz 2017)Google Scholar .

31 Wiretapping, GPS localisation of vehicles, etc.

32 Doré, F., ‘Champ d’application de l’interdiction de sortie du territoire’, Actualité juridique droit administratif (2017) p. 1345 Google Scholar ; Doré, F. and Nguyen Duy, P., ‘Le contrôle du juge administratif à l’épreuve du terrorisme, l’exemple des interdictions de sortie du territoire’, Actualité juridique droit administratif (2016) p. 886 Google Scholar .

33 Burriez, D., ‘Le dispositif national de gel des avoirs : discrète mais contestable mesure de police administrative en matière de lutte contre le terrorisme’, Revue Française de Droit Administratif (2017) p. 139 Google Scholar .

34 Chambon, M., ‘Une redéfinition de la police administrative’, in J. Alix and O. Cahn (eds.), L’hypothèse de la guerre contre le terrorisme (Dalloz 2017) p. 133 Google Scholar .

35 To be sure, these questions are not exclusively raised by administrative measures in the field of national security and counterterrorism. Several important rulings upholding bans on dwarf-throwing (CE, Ass., 27 Oct. 1995, Cne de Morsang sur Orge, n° 136727), the distribution of pork soups (CE, réf., 5 Jan. 2007, n° 300311) or anti-Semitic shows (CE, réf., 9 Jan. 2014, n° 374508) have already triggered much debate on the frontiers of ‘prevention’ of threats to the public order as a valid means for the justification of administrative measures. It is – notably – in the field of counterterrorism, though, that ‘prevention’ seems to morph into ‘prediction’; public authorities are increasingly allowed (or required) to identify individual before they commit any illegal act, i.e. to predict their future behaviour.

36 According to the Act of 3 April 1955, the initial application of the state of emergency by presidential decree on 14 November 2015 could last a maximum of 12 days; beyond that, an Act of Parliament was required.

37 P. Cassia, ‘Prorogation bis de l’état d’urgence: difficultés juridiques en perspective?’, Mediapart, 12 February 2016, <blogs.mediapart.fr/paul-cassia/blog/120216/prorogation-bis-de-l-etat-d-urgence-difficultes-juridiques-en-perspective>, visited 22 October 2018.

38 Law 2016-987 of 21 July 2016.

39 This of course is hardly unique to France; see Theresa May’s famous intervention declaring that she was ready to ‘rip up’ those human rights laws that impeded the strengthening of counterterrorist legislation: <www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/theresa-may-rip-up-human-rights-laws-impede-new-terror-legislation>, visited 22 October 2018.

40 Art. 38 of the Constitution: ‘Government Bills shall be discussed in the Council of Ministers after consultation with the Conseil d'État and shall be tabled in one or other of the two Houses’ [emphasis added].

41 From the second extension onwards, the Council of State repeatedly insisted that the state of emergency was a special regime that was temporary in nature and should not be prolonged indefinitely (see Advisory Opinion n° INTX1602418L of 2 Feb. 2016: ‘un régime de pouvoirs exceptionnels a des effets qui dans un Etat de droit sont par nature limités dans le temps et dans l’espace’). This affirmation was, however, somewhat incantatory as not once did it lead the Council of State to deliver a negative opinion on the extension Bills presented by the Government.

42 See for instance Advisory Opinion n° 391519 of 28 April 2016: ‘[le Conseil d’Etat] constate sur la base des informations fournies par le Gouvernement: que plusieurs attaques terroristes ont frappé des métropoles d’Europe, du Proche et du Moyen-Orient et, enfin, d’Afrique de l’Ouest, notamment des ressortissants et des intérêts français en Côte d’Ivoire le 13 mai dernier; que le double attentat de Bruxelles commis le 22 mars 2016 est en lien avec les auteurs des attentats récents de Paris (…); le Conseil d’Etat est par conséquent d’avis que la conjonction d’une menace terroriste persistante d’intensité élevée et de [deux] très grands évènements sportifs caractérise un “péril imminent” résultant d’atteintes graves à l’ordre public au sens de l’article 1er de la loi du 3 avril 1955’ (emphasis added).

43 Art. 61 of the Constitution: ‘Institutional Acts, before their promulgation, Private Members’ Bills mentioned in article 11 before they are submitted to referendum, and the rules of procedure of the Houses of Parliament shall, before coming into force, be referred to the Constitutional Council, which shall rule on their conformity with the Constitution. To the same end, Acts of Parliament may be referred to the Constitutional Council, before their promulgation, by the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the President of the National Assembly, the President of the Senate, sixty Members of the National Assembly or sixty Senators’.

44 On this, see Stone, A., The Birth of Judicial Politics in France (Oxford University Press 1992)Google Scholar .

45 Figures are compelling: while there had been only a little over 50 decisions on the grounds of Art. 61 of the Constitution between 1958 and 1974, the figure rose to 180 in the next 12 years.

46 For the sake of exactitude, it should be noted that the 1984-85 activation of the state of emergency in New Caledonia did trigger a petition to the Conseil constitutionnel. The constitutional court, however, declined to exercise any form of review on the 1955 Act, arguing that although it had been activated, it had been neither amended nor modified by the 1984 Act that put the state of emergency into force; see CC, 85-157 DC, 25 January 1985, Etat d’urgence en Nouvelle Calédonie.

47 He urged: ‘Pas de juridisme’: M. Valls, National Assembly, 20 November 2015.

48 The constitutionality of several measures typical of the state of emergency, such as the possibility of administrative house searches or new provisions pertaining to the possibility of complementing house arrests with electronic tagging devices, was discussed both in Parliament (briefly) and in legal scholarship.

49 Art. 61-1 of the Constitution: ‘If, during proceedings in progress before a court of law, it is claimed that a statutory provision infringes the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the matter may be referred by the Conseil d’État or by the Cour de Cassation to the Constitutional Council, within a determined period’.

50 The court before which the Question Prioritaire de Constitutionnalité is raised first assesses its seriousness and, if necessary, refers it to the supreme court of the relevant jurisdictional order (Cour de cassation for judicial courts, Conseil d’Etat for administrative courts). These two supreme courts then re-examine the seriousness and novelty of the question of constitutionality that is raised and may refer it to the Conseil constitutionnel. If they do, the Conseil has three months to deliver its judgment. For more on this procedure, see <www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/sites/default/files/as/root/bank_mm/anglais/eng_dispositions_reglementaires_QPC.pdf>.

51 Decisions 2015-527QPC, 22 December 2015 (not unconstitutional); 2016-535QPC, 19 February 2016 (unconstitutionality of the regime of data seizure during house searches); 2016-567/568QPC, 23 September 2016 (unconstitutionality of the regime of house searches); 2016-600QPC, 23 September 2016 (unconstitutionality of the regime of storage of some of the data that can be seized during house searches); 2017-624QPC, 16 March 2017 (unconstitutionality of a judicial authorisation mechanism in case of the extension of house arrest measures beyond one year in duration); 2017-677QPC, 1 December 2017 (unconstitutionality of the regime of identity checks and luggage searches in the public space); 2017-635QPC, 9 June 2017 (unconstitutionality of geographical bans); 2017-648QPC, 4 August 2017 (unconstitutionality of real-time date interception); 2017-684QPC, 11 January 2018 (unconstitutionality of the regime allowing administrative authorities to limit the right to circulate in certain zones).

52 Emphasis added.

53 V. Champeil Desplats, ‘L’état d’urgence devant le Conseil constitutionnel, ou quand l’Etat de droit s’accommode de normes inconstitutionnelles’, in Hennette Vauchez, supra n. 5.

54 Ibid.

55 Again, on the Conseil Constitutionnel and its institutional and political importance, see Stone, supra n. 44.

56 On which, see C. Roulhac, ‘La mutation du contrôle des mesures de police administrative. Retour sur l’appropriation par le juge administratif du triple test de proportionnalité’, Revue Française de Droit Administratif (2018) p. 843.

57 Either a ‘contrôle de l’erreur d’appréciation’ or a ‘contrôle de la matérialité des faits’.

58 TA de Nantes, réf., 21 January 2016, Association nationale des supporters, n° 1600410 (rejet) et 22 janvier 2016, Association nationale des supporters, 1600413 (rejet).

59 TA de Châlons en Champagne, réf., 12 March 2016, Association de défense et d’assistance juridique des intérêts des supporters, n° 1600463 (rejet).

60 TA de Nice, réf., 20 June 2016, SARL Le Café Le Populaire, n° 1602682.

61 TA Poitiers, 9 November 2016, n° 1601342.

62 Law of 3 April 1955, Art. 8.